


The Truth is Stranger

by Cinnamongirl



Category: Meet Me in the Woods - Lord Huron (Song)
Genre: M/M, Supernatural Elements, midwestern gothic, mild body horror, this fic was not actually sponsored by Mountain Dew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 13:46:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17044850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamongirl/pseuds/Cinnamongirl
Summary: Never go into the woods at night, especially not alone.His mother had said it over and over while they were growing up.People disappear and they don't come back. We’re a Christian family but there are things in the world that are old and powerful and you can’t pretend that something isn’t true just because you don’t like it.Elliot had never thought anything of it until he was in fourth grade, when he’d realized that there were safety warnings for kids like "never get into a stranger’s car" in books and on TV, but they didn’t ever mention anything about disappearing in the woods or about the monsters that lived in the corn. He’d asked his mom about it and she explained that the TV studios were all in big cities where there were no forests or cornfields, so the people there didn’t know.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tekuates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tekuates/gifts).



> This is my Yuletide gift for the excellent human Tekuates, who requested something based on the song "Meet Me in the Woods" by Lord Huron. Tekuates also requested that I try to incorporate the songs "Love Like Ghosts" and "The Night We Met," which are from the same album. My aim here is for "Meet Me in the Woods" to fit Chapter 2 of this story, while the other two songs are for Chapter 3.

> _Ladies and gentlemen, for your safety, _please_ stay away from The Whispering Forest. Do not listen to its hollow compliments, its sappy flattery._  
>  -Welcome to Night Vale

On Saturday afternoon, Ash and his boyfriend Elliot got into an argument about whether or not Elliot was being an asshole, and whether or not it was justifiable for him to be an asshole when he was stressed out about something that he had to present at work on Monday morning. It progressed into an argument about the fact that Elliot refused to look for a new job even though he wouldn’t stop complaining about how much he hated his job, it didn’t pay well, and he had an hour commute each way; and then somehow into an argument about how they had been informally talking about getting married for the past two years, but they weren’t officially engaged yet and they both thought that it was the other’s fault. It ended when Elliot said “I need to be alone right now” and stormed out of the house.

By 11pm, Ash was starting to worry that Elliot wouldn’t come back. Elliot had done this a handful of times before but he was always back within a few hours. Ash thought about calling to ask if he could expect him home that night, but he worried that it would make him look clingy and awkward and also like he couldn’t respect his boyfriend’s need for space. He spent the night sitting on the couch, ostensibly watching the Food Network but mostly glancing back and forth between his phone and the front door.

He woke up on Sunday afternoon with a sore neck and his phone battery at 7%. He looked throughout the house but there were no signs that Elliot had been home while he was asleep. Ash checked his phone over and over but there were no missed calls or voicemails or text messages or Facebook messages or anything. He even checked their joint bank account, but there hadn’t been any new transactions since Elliot left. 

Ash spent over an hour trying to decide whether to contact Elliot, and how he should do it. He finally decided to send one text:

_Im going to the store later do we need anything?_

He thought that it set the right tone, because it invited a response but it didn’t sound too needy. There was no answer.

Had he missed something in the argument yesterday? Was there a moment when Elliot said that he was going to leave and never come back, or maybe something Ash had said that would justify this? He still couldn’t remember how it had started but he didn’t think that either of them said anything too horrible.

He finally called Elliot at 10pm. It rang the normal number of times before going to voicemail, which meant that his phone was turned on and that he hadn’t declined the call. Ash tried to keep his voice casual as he left a message. 

_“Hey, it’s me. Look, I’m sorry about last night. I won’t bother you if you still need to be alone or whatever but I was just worried about you. Can you at least let me know if you’re going to be back tonight or not? Love you.”_

Elliot never called back and Ash spent the whole night awake and worried. He'd always had trouble sleeping when Elliot wasn’t there. 

He staggered into work on Monday morning running on anxiety and caffeine. He managed to get through the first half of the day without screwing anything up too badly or making anyone mad at him, but when he went to lunch he noticed a new voicemail from a number that he didn’t recognize.

_”Hello, this message is for Asher Connolly. This is Tyler from Denner and Washington and you’re listed as the emergency contact for Elliot Mueller. Elliot didn’t come to work this morning and he hasn’t answered his phone, which is really not like him. I was just wondering if you knew whether or not Elliot was sick, or if he’ll be back tomorrow. Please call me back at…”_

Ash stared at his phone, feeling like it was hard to breathe. Elliot had been freaking out about the meeting this morning for the past week. No matter how angry he was with Ash, it wouldn’t make sense for him to miss work. He called the number back immediately.

“Hello, Denner and Washington.” It was a woman’s voice.

“Can I speak to Tyler?” Had Tyler given his last name? He couldn’t remember.

“Just one moment.”

Ash listened to scratchy hold music while he tried to remember if Elliot had ever mentioned Tyler. As far as he could remember, Tyler was one of the higher-ups but he wasn’t Elliot’s direct supervisor. He knew that Elliot was out to some people at work, but not all of them. Should he refer to himself as Elliot’s boyfriend or his roommate? He was still trying to decide when the phone picked up. “Hello, this is Tyler.”

“Hi, this is Ash Connolly. I got your message about Elliot. Has he been in yet?”

“No, I’m afraid not. Do you know if anything’s wrong? I was really surprised when he didn’t show up this morning.”

“No, sorry. He actually hasn’t been home since Saturday night. I’ll check with his family to see if they’ve heard from him.”

“All right. Please let me know if you hear from Elliot. This really isn’t like him.”

“Sure thing. Sorry again that I didn’t have more information.”

It sounded like Tyler was more worried about Elliot’s well-being than upset that he’d missed what was apparently an important meeting. Maybe there was actually a good reason for Elliot’s loyalty to his job. They could still probably pay him more, though.

He called Elliot’s sister Bethany right away. She was the family member who he was closest to, and also the only one who actually liked Ash.

“Hey Ash, is something wrong?”

“Yeah, actually. How’d you guess?”

“You always text instead of calling. What happened?”

“Have you heard from Elliot? He hasn’t been home since Saturday and he’s not answering his phone and his work just called me to say that he didn’t come in today, either.”

“Weird. No, I haven’t talked to him since last week. I wonder where he is?”

“Shit. This is not good.” Elliot wouldn’t have disappeared without at least telling his sister. “Hey, this is going to sound crazy and I’m probably just being paranoid, but how long does a person have to be missing before you can file a report with the police?”

“I think I heard in a movie that they have to be gone for at least 48 hours, but I don’t know if that’s how it works in real life.”

“So that’s… some time this afternoon? Fuck.” He let his head fall back against the seat. “We were arguing before he walked out.” He really didn’t want to be the person who called the police because his boyfriend wanted to be away from him for a while. “I keep thinking that Elliot is just going to turn up and get annoyed at me for freaking out, but then I worry that he’s dead in a ditch somewhere and we aren’t even looking for him.”

“It would have been on the news or something if he’d gotten in an accident, right?”

“Yeah, good point… And his phone is still turned on, so he has to be charging it. He’s probably just- shit, I don’t know.”

“This is really not like anything he’s ever done before, though. At least I don’t think so. Is it?”

“He’s been known to storm off sometimes, but never for this long, and he never just skips work. But he has his car and his phone and his wallet, so it’s not like he wouldn’t be okay if he decided to go on a random vacation or something.”

“This seems serious.” Her voice sounded like she didn’t completely believe it.

“I’ll see if he turns up tonight, and then I’ll report it tomorrow morning if I still haven’t heard anything.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good plan. I’ll try calling him too. Hopefully he won’t ignore me.”

“Thanks. Talk to you later, hopefully.”

“Bye.” 

So he had a plan, at least. It somehow made him feel worse.

Ash managed to get even less done in the afternoon, in between checking his phone every two minutes. Bethany texted him to let him know that Elliot hadn’t answered his phone for her, either, and that their mother also hadn’t heard from him.

He went to the store while he was in town, because they did actually need paper towels and toothpaste and they were were almost out of food. Ash also picked up a case of Mountain Dew. “I hope this makes you happy,” he muttered at nothing in particular. Elliot didn’t drink nearly as much Mountain Dew as he used to when they were teenagers, but Ash could never understand why he liked it as much as he did. “It’ll give you diabetes,” he would say, but Elliot would argue that we all have to die sometime. He’d also tried to point out that it tastes like robot piss but Elliot just shrugged and said “maybe I’m into that.”

Ash usually listened to true crime podcasts while he was driving, but he was too anxious and dazed to focus on anything. It wasn’t until he was almost home that he realized he’d forgotten to buy toothpaste.

He couldn’t find anything to eat for dinner, even though he’d literally just been grocery shopping, but it didn’t matter because he was too worried to eat. About an hour after he got home, he heard a car pull into the driveway. There were footsteps. He heard someone—Elliot, it had to be Elliot, right?—tried to unlock the door, but it sounded like they were having trouble with the key. Ash had a thought that this was how people get murdered by serial killers but he opened the door anyway. 

Elliot was standing there, key in hand, with an expression on his face that Ash couldn’t even begin to describe. “Ash, is that you?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course it’s me. What-” He didn’t get a chance to ask what the fuck Elliot even meant by that because he just collapsed forward and grabbed onto Ash like he couldn’t stand up on his own. Elliot’s body felt cold. “What happened to you?”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I thought- I don’t know. I love you.”

“What _happened_?”

“I think I was in the woods.”


	2. Chapter 2

_Never go into the woods at night, especially not alone._ His mother had said it over and over while he and his sister were growing up. _People disappear and they don’t come back. We’re a Christian family but there are things in the world that are old and powerful and you can’t pretend that something isn’t true just because you don’t like it._

Elliot had never thought anything of it until he was in fourth grade, when he’d realized that there were safety warnings for kids like "never get into a stranger’s car" in books and on TV, but they didn’t ever mention anything about disappearing in the woods or about the monsters that lived in the corn. He’d asked his mom about it and she explained that the TV studios were all in big cities where there were no forests or cornfields, so the people there didn’t know. His mom still believed that climate change wasn’t real and that Ash had made him gay, but he was starting to think that she’d been right about the woods.

“What the hell?” Ash said. He’d gotten all of the same lectures from his parents, too.

“I don’t know.” 

His brain was fuzzy and it was hard to stand up. It felt like his feet were losing their grip on the floor and he had to hold on to Ash to keep from falling through it. He was just grateful that he’d managed to drive home safely before his body started falling apart.

“Shit, you should lie down. Come on.” Ash led him to the couch. He managed to collapse down onto it, but it felt wrong. His whole body felt wrong. At least the couch was still in the same place that it used to be. “What happened to you? Have you been in the woods all this time?” Ash was feeling his forehead. “You’re cold and, like, really pale.”

Elliot fumbled one of his sleeves up to his elbow and stared at his arm. His skin was a lot paler than usual. Almost translucent, even.

“You’re probably starving, right? I bet you’re really dehydrated. What’ve you been doing for the past two days?” Ash was nervously hovering. It would have been funny if Elliot had had the energy to appreciate it.

“I don’t know,” he said again. “There’s something wrong with me.” It was the only way he could think to describe it.

“Do you want anything to eat?”

“No.” He knew intellectually that he should probably eat something, but the idea didn’t sound appealing at all.

“I got some Mountain Dew for you. Do you want one?”

“Sure. You didn’t have to do that.” Ash must’ve been really worried about him. He brought him a soda and ended up opening the can for him after Elliot spent a long time trying and failing to open it. He managed to take a drink and set it down on the coffee table without spilling anything. 

Ash sat down on the floor. He was so nervous that he was chewing on his bottom lip, and it looked like he hadn't slept or showered in days. “I’m still trying to figure out what happened to you,” he finally said.

“I don’t know.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I remember driving away on Saturday night- I was just trying to get away before I said something that I’d regret. I went north on the highway for a while, but then I pulled off on a side road. Maybe I was trying to turn around? At the time, it seemed like something I should do. I remember getting out of the car, and then... I woke up tonight, just lying on the ground in the woods. My car was parked on the shoulder so I got back in it and drove home.”

“You don’t remember anything from the past two days?”

“I don’t know.” He had a lot of memories, much more than two days’ worth, but he didn’t know if any of them were real. They couldn’t have been real.

Ash made an irritated noise. “Do you at least know if you were lying there in the woods the whole time?”

“I had to have been, right? It doesn’t make sense, though. My phone was at 83% battery when I woke up and I’m too clean, aren’t I? It doesn’t even smell like I peed my pants.” He would've peed himself at least once if he'd been unconscious for two days.

“Yeah, you don’t look good but you don’t look like you’ve gone two days without food or water. Maybe you stayed at somebody's house and used their phone charger for a couple of days, but then you hit your head hard enough to give you amnesia and your friend was afraid that you were dead so they dumped your body in the woods?”

It made a lot more sense than anything Elliot remembered.

He didn’t sleep that night. He just lay in bed, staring at Ash and torn between trying to remember and trying not to remember. It was hard to believe that he was back home again. It felt like he was suddenly dropped into a part of his life that had happened a long time ago.

He called the office in the morning and explained the situation as best as he could. They strongly encouraged him to see a doctor and reminded him that he could go on short-term disability leave if he ran out of sick time.

Ash convinced him to eat some toast for breakfast but he couldn’t manage more than a very small bite. The idea of food just seemed completely unappealing, and chewing and swallowing felt like too much work. He did manage to drink a little more Mountain Dew but even that was difficult for him.

Ash called in to work so that he could take Elliot to the walk-in clinic in the city of Harrison, which was also where Ash worked. It was about a 40 minute drive, depending on how badly you ignored the speed limit. The town where they lived had about 600 people, a post office, a fire station, one school for grades K-12, one gas station, two bars, and three churches, so they usually went to Harrison for everything except for Elliot's job, which was about an hour away in the other direction. Ash had always tried to convince him to get a job in Harrison so that they could commute together and save money on gas.

The nurse practitioner at the clinic was a serious, middle-aged woman. Elliot tried to explain his symptoms to her but he couldn’t get farther than “There’s something wrong with me.”

Ash tried to help. “He doesn’t seem to want to eat or drink anything and he doesn’t have much energy. He’s lost fine motor control in his hands. He was gone for two days and he says that he doesn’t remember anything- I think he was in the woods the whole time.”

She looked at both of them skeptically. “Which woods? What did you do in there?” She must have grown up in the city.

“I don’t know.”

She had him hold his hands out flat and then squeeze her fingers to test how strong his grip was. She asked a lot of questions about whether or not he’d been experiencing any pain or numbness or tremors anywhere in his body. 

“Are you taking any medications?” she asked for the third time.

“No.”

“Any drug use?”

“Not since college. I don’t even drink very often.”

“Hmm.” She typed something on the computer. “Your heart rate and your blood pressure are both a little low but your vitals look fine otherwise. This could be nothing, but I want to make sure that it isn’t anything more serious. I’m going to order some labs while you’re here. Try to at least drink water, even if you don’t feel like eating anything, and come back if you notice any new symptoms or if you aren’t feeling better within a few days.”

Elliot went to a different area in the clinic to have his blood drawn. The nurse had a lot of trouble sticking him with the needle.

“I usually have good veins,” he said. “I guess I’m just dehydrated right now?”

“You’re fine, I’m probably having an off day today.” When she finally managed to get the needle in the right place, he didn’t even feel it.

 

Ash went to a fast food place for lunch before they went home. He looked worried when Elliot said that he didn’t want anything but he didn’t press the issue.

Elliot watched the trees pass by along the highway. He remembered the first time his family had gone camping, when he was six or seven. He couldn’t stop crying because he kept looking at the trees all around them and thinking about how his mother had said that people disappear in forests. She had reassured him that they only made public campgrounds in places that were known to be safe, so he should be okay as long as he didn’t wander off. He’d grabbed on to her and refused to let go for the rest of the weekend.

“I do remember what happened while I was gone. Or least I think I do. I’m not sure.”

“What?” Ash jerked the steering wheel in surprise and nearly swerved off the road. “What do you remember?”

“I don’t know for sure. I was- somewhere else. It was gray and dry and empty. Like the moon, except with gravity and an atmosphere. There wasn’t anything alive there but there were lots of these floaty black shadow-things. I think they might have been the souls of dead people.”

“Are you saying that there’s a portal to hell in the woods just off the highway?”

“Apparently, yeah. But it wasn’t like Christian hell. It was more like one of the realms from D&D, but I don’t remember the name of it. Everything was weird and dead there.”

“So I guess you’re like Persephone? Did you eat anything?”

“No. There wasn’t anything to eat, but I wasn’t hungry anyway. Stuff like that didn’t seem to matter there. I just walked a lot and tried to get the shadows to talk to me.” He had memories of crying and begging them for something, but he couldn’t remember exactly what it was. Everything from the other place seemed so far away now. “Time was different, I think. It’s like in a dream, where time passes more quickly. It felt like I was there for a long time, maybe even a year.” 

“How did you get back?”

“I don’t know. I woke up, I guess.”

“If you were kind of in stasis while you were there, it would explain why you didn’t need to eat or go to the bathroom or anything.”

“Yeah, I guess.” 

 

On Wednesday, Elliot felt even worse but he convinced Ash to go to work because he didn’t think there was anything that he could do to help him. He spent most of the day lying on the couch, watching some home improvement show because he couldn’t work the TV remote, and trying to remember what had happened while he was gone. He had a lot of memories of walking around and trying to get the shadows’ attention, to ask them for something, but it was all so surreal and distant. It was like in a dream, where everything had made sense at the time but it was hard to understand in hindsight.

Someone from the clinic called him. It took several tries to answer his phone but he finally managed it. A nurse told him that his blood sugar, iron, thyroid level, and several other things were all too low. The nurse practitioner had ordered more labs and an EKG and she prescribed him three different medications. Elliot thanked her and said that he would ask Ash to give him a ride into town, but he seriously doubted that any of it would be able to help him.

After he got off the phone, he looked down and saw that his arm and part of his chest had literally sunk into the couch. It was like he was slowly phasing through it. He gave a startled yelp and tried to pull himself out of the couch, but he ended up rolling off and falling on the floor. It should have hurt when he hit his head on the coffee table but he barely felt it. Elliot tried to sit up, but he couldn’t move his arms underneath him to push himself up. Shit. Ash was going to come home and see him lying helplessly on the floor, like in one of those commercials.

Suddenly, his body rose to his feet. Elliot wasn’t consciously controlling it. His legs weren’t even working to support him; it was like something had pulled him up. “What the hell?” He tried to walk, or flail his arms around, or do _something_ , but he ended up just falling back onto the couch. He decided to call it a win and just stay there until Ash got back.

Elliot was still there, with his body mostly on top of the couch, when Ash got home. “How was work?” he asked, trying to sound normal.

“Fine. Boring. How are you?”

“Apparently I have a bunch of medical problems.”

“Shit, is that why you’ve been feeling so bad? What’s wrong?”

“No, it’s-” he tried to figure out how to explain it. “It’s getting worse, whatever it is. I think I need to go back to the woods.”

“Why?” Ash had a confused, worried look that made Elliot feel guilty. “Isn’t that how you got into this situation in the first place? And no offense, but I really don’t want this to happen to me, too.”

“We won’t go in that deep, and I’ll be with you. I just need to remember what happened to me and I think it will help.”

Ash looked at him for a long moment and Elliot was sure that he’d refuse, not that he’d blame him. “Okay,” he finally said. “We’ll go. Do you need help getting up?”

He was starting to say that yes, help would be great, when his body jerked up into something that was almost like sitting, and then again so that he was awkwardly balancing on his feet.

“What was _that_?”

“Uh, yeah, apparently my body sometimes moves by itself now?”

“What?!”

“I can also phase through solid objects, I guess.”

“This isn’t real, right? None of this is real.” Ash shook his head. “Come on, let’s get you to the car.”

Leaning on Ash, he managed to walk to the car and climb in. It was early evening, but it was dark already. Ash talked to him while they drove. “Have you heard of the suicide forest in Japan?”

“Wasn’t that the thing with that one YouTuber?”

“Yeah, but I looked it up earlier and apparently it’s based on an ancient ghost story. The legend is that the forest lures people in and then kills them.”

“Creepy. Do you think that’s what happened to me?”

“Maybe. It still doesn’t explain how you got out, or what’s happening to you now.”

Elliot told him where to turn off the main highway. He parked by the side of the road. Ash opened the car door for Elliot and grabbed his hand. It was a sign of how bad this whole situation was that Elliot was pleasantly surprised to see that he could still hold hands. His body started walking toward the trees.

“Where are you going?” Ash asked.

“I have no idea! I’m not even controlling it.”

“I really hope you didn’t drag me out here to kill me or something.”

Elliot didn’t say anything. It was scary to realize that he couldn't promise anything right now. He distantly noticed that Ash kept tripping over sticks and things on the ground while he just passed through them.

They’d barely gone a few feet past the tree line when he heard Ash say “Elliot, stop! What happened to you?”

Thankfully, he stopped moving. “What do you mean?” He still felt the same way that he’d been feeling for the past few days.

Ash used the flashlight on his phone to light Elliot’s body. “Look,” he said.

Elliot looked down. He could see his legs and feet but he could also see through them to the ground below. It was like he was a hologram from Star Wars. 

“What’s _that_?” Ash asked. He was pointing at Elliot’s chest.

The rest of his body was see-through but there was something black inside the middle of his chest. It was about the size of a football, but without the pointy ends, and it was shifting and pulsating inside of him. It was the only part of his body that was opaque. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I think that’s what’s been making my body move.”

“Is this like a Venom situation?”

He didn’t know how to answer that. 

“Seriously, are you going to start killing people or something?” Ash was looking nervously at the black thing but he was still standing right next to Elliot.

“I’d better fucking not.”

 

Elliot managed to fall asleep that night. He thought he was back in the other place at first, before he realized that it was just a dream, a memory of a time that had been surreal and dream-like to begin with. He was yelling at the shadows, but this time he could remember what he’d said to them. “I have to go back! My boyfriend is waiting for me and he probably thinks I’m still mad at him.”

The shadows tried to tell him that he was already dead. They said that he’d died once he crossed over to this plane, and he wouldn’t be able to survive back in his world. They didn’t have any mouths that he could see but they spoke somehow, with an accent that he had never heard before. He’d wondered if it was some kind of psychic communication but none of them ever explained it to him.

“Please, there has to be a way for me to go back! Can someone at least pass on a message to him? I just want to talk to him one more time!” He yelled incoherently and sang every annoying song that he could think of and described human bodily functions in graphic detail, for what felt like months.

Finally, one of the shadows said **Fine, you win. If it’ll shut you up, I can live inside your body for a while. You’ll be able to go back to the other side with me possessing you. You won’t have more than a few days, but it’ll give you enough time to say goodbye.**

“Are you serious? Thank you so much!” He could hardly believe that he was actually getting an answer after all this time. “Wait, will you be okay over there?”

**I’m already dead, but thanks for asking.**

“I thought I was already dead, too?”

**I’ve been here for a very long time. My form is not what it used to be, but I’m not fragile anymore.**

“What?”

**If you ever find your way back here, promise me that you’ll pay it forward.**

That was the last thing that Elliot heard in his dream before he woke up. He looked over and saw that Ash was still asleep.

“Ash, wake up!” Elliot tried to nudge him awake but his hands kept slipping through his body. “I remember what happened now!” He finally managed to push him with enough solidity that Ash blinked awake.

“What’s wrong?” He mumbled it as his eyes fell shut again.

“I’m dead.”

“What the fuck?” Ash propped himself up on his arm, yawning but alert.

“I died when I crossed over. I’m only here now because of the shadow inside me, but it won’t last very long.”

He saw the expression on Ash’s face and the realization hit Elliot that he was talking about his own death. He’d been so excited to finally have an answer about what was wrong with him that he hadn’t really thought about the reality of the situation, or how this must feel to Ash, who up until recently had lived in the normal world where things made sense. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, I’m not the one who’s going to-” his voice choked. “I knew that something was wrong, but I guess I was hoping that you’d get better and everything would be okay again.” He was obviously trying not to cry and his face ended up in an odd grimace. “We won’t get to go to Ireland next summer, or get married. We should’ve gotten married a long time ago. It’s my fault.” He rubbed his hand across his face to wipe the tears away. “Shit.”

“I’m sorry,” Elliot said again. 

“Don’t be sorry. _I’m_ sorry.”

“I think this is where I’m supposed to reassure you that I won’t be mad if you meet someone else after I’m gone?”

“Why are you trying to comfort _me_?” He was still crying but he had a rueful look on his face that was almost a smile. Ash suddenly stared at him. “What's going on with your arm?"

Elliot looked down to see that part of his right arm was slowly dissolving, for lack of a better word. It was almost completely translucent and most of his hand had faded into black smoke. “Uh, Ash, I don’t feel so good.”

Ash stared at him in shock before he started laughing out loud, even while he was still crying. “I hate you so much.”

“No you don’t.”

“I don’t,” he agreed. “How did you even do that?”

“I swear it wasn’t on purpose." Elliot couldn't actually tell if he had a hand left, but he had bigger problems right now. "I really don’t think I have much time left. I love you. I want to say that while I still can. I love you so much.”

Ash tried to put his arm around him. After a few tries, he gave up and just let his arm sink through Elliot’s body. He kissed him as well as he could, with their faces overlapping. It felt weirdly intimate to share the same space. “I love you,” he said. “I’ll never forget you.”

 

Ash tried to skip work to be with Elliot, but Elliot wouldn’t let him. He wanted to die (or finish dying, anyway) while Ash was somewhere else and had an alibi, because there would be a very awkward police investigation if he died mysteriously while they were home alone together. 

He gave Ash his passwords for everything and had him write down messages to pass along to his friends and family. Elliot wished that he’d had the foresight to have an actual will written up. He wished that he was corporeal enough to have sex with Ash one last time. Hell, he wished that he’d managed to live to age 40.

Elliot had once read an article written by a paramedic who had watched dozens of people take their last breaths. The writer said that you’d think that people would be panicking, but almost everyone faced their death with a calm acceptance. He wondered if that was what he was experiencing right now. He thought that he must have an advantage over most people, because he’d already died and he knew that it didn’t hurt.


	3. Chapter 3

True to his word, Elliot died while Ash was at work. The security camera in lobby of the fire station showed him walking through the front door, staring straight into the camera, and then collapsing into a pile of dust on the floor while something that looked like smoke rose up into the air.

It took Ash a long time to figure out why he’d chosen the fire station, of all places. He couldn’t possibly have thought that the firefighters could save him. He finally realized that it was the only place within walking distance that was open during the day, had security cameras, and wouldn’t have any kids there.

Ash explained to the sheriff that Elliot had been in the woods alone at night, and the sheriff didn’t even bother with asking him more questions. The newspaper in town reported Elliot’s death as a suicide.

People kept asking Ash if there was anything that they could do but he always told them no because he didn’t know what to ask for.

Elliot’s funeral was held at a church that Elliot hadn’t seen the inside of since he was eleven years old. Ash was half expecting Elliot’s mother to blame Ash for his death or try to kick him out, but she hugged him when she saw him and cried on his shoulder.

Afterward, he went back to Bethany’s apartment. She cooked a frozen pizza and they spent the rest of the day drinking beer and sharing stories about Elliot.

 

The house should have been too quiet without Elliot there, but it was actually too loud. It sounded like several squirrels were involved in a turf war over the attic, and the screen door banged open and shut even when it wasn’t very windy outside. Ash was almost positive that the refrigerator had never hummed so loudly before. It also seemed like there were too many shadows inside the house. None of them moved when they shouldn’t be moving and there weren’t any shadows that looked like they shouldn’t be there, but he could swear that almost every room in the house had more shadows than it used to.

He was watching TV late at night because he’d given up on getting any sleep when he heard a noise from the kitchen that sounded like something had fallen off of a shelf. He went in to check, but nothing was out of place. When it happened again five minutes later, he went back to the kitchen and looked around warily. Everything was normal, except for the loud refrigerator. He decided that he should probably have someone inspect it, just in case.

“Okay, you have my attention.” He spoke out loud to nothing in particular. There was no response. “I don’t know if you’re Elliot’s ghost, or the thing that was possessing him, or something else, but thanks for being here with me. It’s nice to know that I’m not alone right now.” 

Ash looked around the kitchen again. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. “Hey, I have a lot of soda that I need to use up. Do you like Mountain Dew?”

There was a thud from somewhere in the attic.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He got two cans and set them down at opposite ends of the coffee table. He opened both of them, in case Elliot was still having trouble with fine motor coordination. Ash gestured toward the empty cushion at the other end of the couch. “Do you want to watch Chopped with me?”

There was no answer.

Ash fell asleep within a few minutes. When he woke up in the morning, the TV had automatically shut itself off. His soda can was still full but the other one on the table was empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that authors have been revealed, I want to talk about how this was originally going to be a story about trauma recovery. I was interested in exploring the experience of coming back from something horrible that doesn't even make sense and feeling like you're a fundamentally different person because of it, only to be faced with people who either don't believe you or think that it was your fault. I realized pretty early that it wouldn't have been right for the exchange because it would have been really long and I probably wouldn't have finished in time, but also because it didn't fit as well with the songs. With so many references to "ghosts" and "haunting" in the lyrics, I felt like at least one person needed to die. I'd never written a ghost story before this and it was an interesting experience, but I still plan to write the other version of this story at some point in the future. If nothing else, these nerds deserve a happy ending.
> 
> Edit 9/19: So I finally started watching Stranger Things (am I the last person to see it?) and I keep getting reminded of this Yuletide fic that I wrote last year. I feel like I should point out that, at the time when I wrote this, I knew almost nothing about Stranger Things and any similarities are unintentional. In my defense, small towns in the midwest are just like that.


End file.
